Sushobhan, who took me there, assured me that the food at Home Town was authentic Sichuan.

I first came across the term ‘Shezwan’ in Mumbai more than a decade back. This referred to red coloured rice or noodles and side dishes served in the Shetty owned restaurants of Mumbai. The ‘Shezwan’ in Mumbai had its fans amongst those who wanted ‘spicy’ food.

I found Mumbai’s obsession with red food when I came here in the 90s more bewildering than the communist rule at West Bengal then. Shezwan would make me cringe as would the red curries of the Muslim restaurants here, the red coloured sea food passed off as Punjabi by local South Indians. I would not touch these with a barge pole.

In my world food cannot be red.

Italians with their ground tomato pastes and Thais with their ground red chillies are exceptions.

The rest?

Fake, ersatz offspring of experiments with chemical food colours.

Deep down I felt that Schezwan, or Sichuan as I later knew it as, could not be red.

Update: The tweets and the blog comment from Robyn of Eating Asia, whom I’d trust, shows that there could be a red oil film in Sichuan dishes. She gives the red oil in the picture of the Singaporean dish (which I posted at the end here) as an example. Actually that did remind me of the oil film of dishes like mutton fry that one gets here.

My dinner at Home Town year later proved that Sichuan needn’t be red. We did see what looked like a hot pot in the next table at the too looked like a blackish oily soup.

I came back to Mumbai determined to recreate one of the dishes I had at Home Town. Mutton with wild onions and ginger. I had deconstructed the dish as being shreds of mutton fried in loads of oil with onion and ginger and Sichuan pepper corns. There was a sight change though. I planned to use pork instead of mutton and tame instead of ‘wild’ onions.

The dish was covered with roasted dry red chillies. ‘More chillies than meat’ as Bourdain observed on his chapter on China in The Nasty Bits.

Robyn points out that all Sichuan dishes aren’t covered with red chillies.

For the red chillies I used the tip given by the @pathfynder (on twitter) recommended Handi at Jaipur. I went there in search of Janglee Maas, the dish that ad man Piyush Pandey had spoken highly off when he heard I was going to Jaipur. Jaangli maas is a dish of mutton double cooked in ghee and salt and served with dry red chillies roasted in ghee. A simple primordial pleasure.

The waiter at Handi pointed out that the chillies are roasted separately and added at the end.

“Else they will overcook”.

Dennis, or @deeselicious as he is known on twitter, got me Sichuan pepper corns recently. My friend A, the Spice Girl from Sydney, told me that the trick is to roast the peppercorns first so that they don’t get bitter.

Do read the comment of Simon Majumdar on Sichuan peppers in the blog comment section. He talks about the numbing ability of Sichuan pepper corns and points out they aren’t actually ‘peppers’. Something that Sushobhan’s wife, Sudha, told me too. She said Sichuan peppers are actually berries.

For the pork I checked with my friend Chef Vishal (@vishalkod on twitter) who works at Sydney. He confirmed my hunch that one should go for pork loins as I was looking for boneless meat to stir fry. He assured me that it would cook properly. I was nervous as I thought pork was a tough meat which had to be over cooked. Plus Indian pork is considered to be unsafe by many.

And so my ‘recipe’ for the Sichuan stir fried pork was ready. Inspired by memories of events and snatches of conversation.

I picked up pork loin at Meghna Agra at Bandra’s Pali Market. A kilo at Rs 500. That’s a lot of meat and frankly 250 g is more than enough for two.

Meghna Agro works for me over the more popular Catholic owned meat shops at Pali Market. Jatin Bhalla, the owner of Meghna Agro, shows good Punjabi spunk and makes things really easy for you in terms of portion sizes and cuts of your choice and no fuss delivery to your home within the specified time. Makes it really convenient specially when one lives next door.

Jatin later told me that only foreigners pick pork loins from him. “Best for stir fries”

This time I got to meet Mr Bhaarat B Bhalla while the boys at Meghna thawed and chopped the pork loins to my specs.

MR Bhalla is the father of Jatin. A journalist and Hindi film scrip writer as he introduced himself. He rattled names of films such as Kalicharan, Sanam Bewafa, Khalnayika and many more that he had written for. Mr Bhalla regaled me with his conversation as I waited.

Potatoes are popular in all English speaking countries as there was no food left there during the World War. They would forage whatever was underground like potatoes. India was different… We were in the war because the British ruled us. Not out of choice… There was no milk available so they started drinking black tea and coffee in England. Later it became a fashion… no one dies because they don’t get to eat. People die of over eating….Foreigners prefer buying frozen meat. They think the bacteria is killed that way … I had horse meat at Russia this time. Most expensive meat there but one should try everything

And so I headed home. I cooked a kilo of pork in the huge Ikea wok K got me from KL. I kept frying the meat in bits and pushing it to the side of the wok and added more and stirred. But with 250 g you can cook it all at one go.

I was really pleased with the way the pork cooked. This was the first time I stir fried pork. I was apprehensive that it wouldn’t cook. The juicy texture of the meat at the end was very satisfying.

Heat the wok and add 2 tablespoons of red Sichuan peppercorns and and roast them. This will take 5 seconds at the most. Take these out.

Add quite a bit, half a teacup of cooking oil, and heat it on a full flame

When hot add about 10 dry deseeded red chillies. Take them out in less than 5 seconds as they begin to crackle. Ideally shouldn’t become as black as mine have in the pic. Should be dark red. Keep these aside

Stir fry:

The oil would have taken the woody flavour of the dry red chillies

Keep the gas on high and add 1 quartered onion bulb, 1 sliced ginger in the bubbling oil

Stir a bit. As the colour changes and the onion & ginger look a bit darker, add the the pepper corn

Then add the marinated pork

Keep stirring with a ladle and add a bit more salt. Half a teaspoon to start. The soy is salty too.

Add the juice from the marinade as the meat begins to cook and change colour

You should be done in a maximum of ten minutes

Serve:

Add the dry red chillies to the dish. Break them with a spoon (whole in the photos here) so that you have 1 inch bits of chilli spread through the meat

Served with steamed rice. There would be a bit of sauce in the meat.

The result would be juicy, incredibly flavoured but not ‘spicy’ in a tongue searing way.

And no, like the Singaporean ‘original’, this too wasn’t red.

Though the former, as Roby points out, did have a red oil film.

This, by the way, is a bb picture of the Sichuan mutton at Home Town. The inspiration behind my recipe. Close?

Saw your tweet late. Your version is missing the red oil of your inspiration dish, and I've never eaten a dish in Sichuan with big wedges of onion in it. But in the end, if it tasted good who cares! The only Sichuan dish I get prickly about "authenticity" with is mapo dofu -- must have huajiao (Sichuan peppercorns) and be swimming in red oil. And no peas please! (the American Chinese version).A bit of trivia following onto Simon's comment -- various types of prickly ash/Sichuan peppercorn are also used in northern Thai, Bhutanese, Nepalese and northern Sumatran cuisines.

Thanks for writing in Simon. It's amazing how cultures in China and India still use natural remedies for curing folks...often fairly common sensical

@Robyn...I noticed the red oil in the original photo after reading your comment. I actually did have some chilli oil at home. Was that the answer. I've seen a similar rededish oil in Muslim restaurants here...specially in the fried meat dishes

Sudha, who was with me at Singapore, did mention, like you, that Sichuan pepper are berries used in Nepali cooking too

Next time try using pork belly,should give you an even better result.The fat will keep it moist and enhance the flavour, and the skin if roasted first and then sliced and stir fried will give you a nice yummy crackling. A bit of this stir fried with mundane greens like spinach,bok choy or green beans will take the dish to the next level...

Oh even I cant wait to come down to Mumbai,I guess that will be possible only next year...for a crispier skin, the pork belly is usually rubbed with salt wich draws all the moisture out and then you start roasting at a high temperature i.e.220 degrees and then drop it down to 180degrees and cook till it is golden brown and crispy

For a crispy crackling you need to roast the pork belly...if it's a big chunk of meat then after its marinated roast at 220 for 10 mins and then 15-20 mins at 180 depending on the size, if the belly is cut into pieces then it will take bit less time.

Hey K! Any idea where do you get the evasive Sichaun Peppercorns in India - more specifically in Delhi. Just came back from Hongkong, met with blank looks when I enquired about the same. Wrote it down for a few patient individuals but all in vain...

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